EU members urged to admit to CIA renditions

David Gow in Brussels
Wednesday June 28, 2006
The Guardian


More than a dozen European governments yesterday came under severe pressure to own up to their secret services' role in handing over suspected terrorists to US intelligence after Franco Frattini, the EU justice commissioner, admitted for the first time that European territory had been used for "extraordinary renditions".

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Mr Frattini's intervention came as parliamentarians voted overwhelmingly to approve a report by Liberal Swiss senator Dick Marty that "named and shamed" 14 European states, including Britain, Germany and Sweden, and watched a video containing direct testimony on secret detention and torture from two survivors.

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(Lady Luford, MEP) said, "European governments can no longer get away with scoffing at the allegations or fobbing us off ... The UK government must accept that, with their denials of complicity in extraordinary rendition wearing ever thinner, the case is pressing for a formal inquiry into whether MI5 tipoffs led to British citizens being incarcerated in Guantánamo and whether CIA planes have rendered people to torture through British airports."

MEPs are, separately, demanding an EU inquiry into alleged transfers and abuses of financial data concerning European citizens from Swift, the Brussels-based international banking body, to the US authorities in the fight against terrorism.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1807444,00.html

:eyes:

but the next P.M. may be willing to open some of the stash to see what is there--and it shouldn't be too long before there is a "next Prime Minister.